ODE. In imitation of PINDAR. __ THE simile’s a very
useful thing, This, priests and poets needs must own, For when the clock-work
of their brains runs down, A simile winds up the mental spring; For instance, when a priest does scan The fall of man, And all its consequences dire, He makes him first a little
sportive pig, So clean, so innocent, so trig, And then an aged sow, deep wallowing in the mire! Yes, sure the similie's a useful thing,
Another instance I will bring. Thou’st seen a cork tost on the rain-swell’d stream, Now up, now down, now whirl’d
round and round, Yet still ’twould swim, And all the
torrent’s fury could not drown’t: So have I seen a forward, empty fop Tost in wit’s blanket, ridicul’d, &c. Yet after all the banter, off he’d hop, Quite confident in self-sufficiency. Ah! had kind heaven, For a defence, Allow’d me half the brazen
confidence, That she to
many a cork-brain’d fool hath given. |